Winning

By Kevin Hogan

Page 4

They KNOW they will accomplish IT, whatever it is.

What that means in English is they know that if they are focused, dedicated and impervious to the feedback of others, they will accomplish. As an outsider, the rational “fan” will know it is very unlikely. All top performers believe they are the best, or are the best, at least on some Sundays.

Winning often requires an irrational belief in the Self. The fact is that the Self shouldn't really be able to do what no one else has done before, and that is true. It probably shouldn't be able to...but the Self that irrationally believes it is possible in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, will do all it takes to accomplish and win, even if it ultimately means losing.

I am quite certain that Usain Bolt is unlikely to lose more than one more race in 2013. Tyson Gay and Justin Gatlin don't have that same luxury to be that certain. On the contrary, they must know that they will win next time. And then when Gatlin or Gay goes on to lose that race, they will need to be certain they will win the next race. And after losing 10 subsequent races, they will still need to be certain they will win the next race.

That is the mind set of someone who can win.

You and I don't have to be the best in the world.
You and I don't have to accomplish what no human has done before.
You and I choose to win at what others have done before us and will do again.

To be in the elite?
Certainly.

But we don't ultimately have to be the very best to ever live at something.

Unless of course, we do...

Being an elite performer and living with an elite performer is no easy task. The constant failure each day of attempting what one has never done before takes a toll. The very best fall 100 times each day, every day.

The same dedication required to win in competition is the same dedication required to win in a relationship.

One of the best chess players of all time was Jack Young. Random chance put Jack and I in the same elementary school classroom. Jack taught me how to play chess when we were 7 or 8 years old.

I never beat Jack. Not once in the thousand plus games we played.

It was clear from the first time we played a game that he was Goliath and I was not David. We often played at my house or at school but most often at night by telephone. My Mom must not have been pleased to have her phone line tied up every single night. She probably didn't know.

Those chess games were important to both of us for very different reasons.

For me, I learned early that losing can be a very fortunate experience. I was always willing to play another. And another. Later in life, that discipline of going to bat against an all star would help pave the way for a relentless attitude that would keep me in a lot of different “games” when others would have quit.

I was lucky in that I got to learn from one of the best ever. Neither of us had any idea he would go on to be a legend in the chess world. He developed all kinds of openings as we played. One opening he developed was called The Fishing Pole. I play chess with my son or on computer nowadays and see that opening played against me and I just shake my head. It's like a time warp.

If I were to want to play chess at a competitive level, I'd have to start playing players who are significantly better than I am. I'd have to play them every single day and exclude many things from life that are very important to me. Today, that is not interesting.

The level of competition you play against is going to be a determining factor in how often you will win or lose.

I never had the desire to dedicate myself as Jack did to studying the game at every level of thinking. Chess is “fun” for me. For him it was an obsession. It requires obsession to win at any level that is significant.

Today he is retired from chess with the rare status of being a Life Master. I'm an average player that won't ever win anything except for having fun because I don't expand the level of competition I face.

"Kevin, your knowledge is worth pure gold, 99.99%! You give genuine, critical, life-directing information. I opted out from almost all self-help-success-secret-etc ezines, except for your Coffee, because it is really valuable. Thank you and please continue." Daniel Naskov, Macedonia